NEW HOMES 'WILL RUIN OUR NEIGHBOURHOOD'

ANGRY campaigners are set to attend a council meeting tonight (Wednesday) fearing a controversial housing development will ruin their neighbourhood if it is approved.

Homeowners in Emmbrook Road, Emm Close, Lowther Road, Emmbrook Vale and Matthewsgreen Road, will be eager to hear the long-awaited outcome of an application for 38 homes in place of eight in Emmbrook Road.

Although planning officers at the council have recommended that the application put forward by Bancroft Developments is approved, residents were so enraged that 270 of them signed a petition against the development, and submitted it to the council in August.

In order to drum up more opposition, the newly-formed Emmbrook Residents’ Association steering committee has sent letters to 600 homeowners this week, urging them to attend the meeting in protest about the plans.

Colin Livingstone, chairman of the residents’ association’s steering committee, will be speaking on behalf of residents tonight and said that there had been “bad feeling and tremendous worry” about the application for months.

Mr Livingstone said: “We decided to set up the residents’ association to fight exactly this sort of application.

“Our primary concern is to make sure Emmbrook is represented at meetings which decided this kind of development, as it is very important to the people who live here.

“This is a major development and the roads and infrastructure around Emmbrook simply won’t be able to cope with the extra homes and traffic this will generate.

“Emmbrook Road is the major road which links our nursery schools as well as the infant, junior and senior schools, and we already have problems with too much traffic and people have to park on the roads as it is.”

Tanya Baker, a mum-of-two from Emm Close, spent more than three weeks collecting signatures from homeowners in Emmbrook.

She said for the new homes would directly overlook her back garden.

“To put 38 houses on that stretch of road is just ludicrous,” Mrs Baker said.

“Traffic is already a problem and it will be a lot worse if this is allowed to go ahead. With all this change it won’t be a village anymore.

“Emmbrook used to be a quiet area but this will ruin it — it will create nothing but problems.”

Other residents fear the development would increase traffic on Emmbrook Road, making it more dangerous to pedestrians and schoolchildren.

They claim there is no provision for a children’s play area or amenity site and that Emmbrook would lose its character.

Wokingham Town Council said the housing would cause more parking problems and be detrimental to the street scene.

Cllr Philip Murfin, district councillor for Emmbrook, said he thought the development was “unacceptable and inconsiderate to the people of Emmbrook”.